Turn My World Upside Down: Jo's Story

by Maureen Child

  He wanted to know what that hair felt like. What it looked like, spread across his pillow. What it smelled like when he buried his face in it.

  “Great. Good job.” Muttering darkly, he shifted uncomfortably, trying to adjust his jeans to ease the ache in his suddenly hard, uncomfortable body.

  There was no relief in sight and he knew it.

  He wanted her and he couldn’t have her.

  That was the plain, simple truth of it.

  Lifting his head, he inhaled sharply, deeply, in and out, several times until he felt control sliding back into place.

  It wouldn’t last.

  He knew that.

  Accepted it.

  Since the moment he’d first seen Jo Marconi, she’d been able to tap into something in him that Cash really didn’t want to encourage. She made him want. And damned if he was going to go that route again.

  He’d had his hard lesson a few years ago. He’d learned that as much as he wanted to be a part of a town like Chandler, the safest way was to remain an outsider. Someone who lived on the fringes.

  Trouble was, the fringes weren’t as comfortable as they used to be.

  Turning around, he stalked across the workshop floor, the heels of his worn cowboy boots clacking loudly, toward the full-sized refrigerator on the back wall. Yanking open the door, he grabbed a beer, twisted off the top, and took a long drink, hoping the icy froth would help with the tangle of hot knots inside him. When he closed the door and turned around again, he wasn’t alone.

  “What’re you workin’ on?”

  Startled, Cash told himself he was losing his touch if a ten-year-old could sneak up on him. He shifted a look at the boy standing in the long rectangle of light at the mouth of the shop. “You’re too quiet, kid.”

  Jack Marconi straddled his bike, ratty sneakers planted on either side of the cross bar. His fists were curled around the handlebars and his hair hung down into the pale blue eyes so much like his sisters’. The boy shrugged and twisted the front wheel of his bike back and forth, making the rubber squeak against the concrete.

  Cash sighed, walked to the radio on the workbench and silenced Steven Tyler mid-howl. “What’s going on, Jack?” he asked, leaning back against the edge of the waist-high worktable.

  “Nothin’,” the kid said, and swung his right leg over the bike before letting it drop with a clatter.

  There was a lot of something in that “nothin’,” Cash thought and frowned as he watched the boy stroll around the workshop. He never had people here. This was his own personal space. A private retreat where he could go to avoid the rest of the world.

  But how in the hell he could toss the kid out, he didn’t know. Cash saw himself in the boy and it wasn’t really something he liked to admit, even to himself. No point in clinging to memories that weren’t worth a damn. Better to focus on the now.

  “You said I could come over sometime,” Jack was saying as he zeroed in on Cash’s work-in-progress and ran one finger along the still rough sides.

  “So I did.” His own damn fault, Cash thought and took another swig of beer. Say something polite to an adult, and they almost never took you up on it. Say it to a kid, and pretty soon that kid was showing up on your doorstep, whether you wanted him to or not.

  The kid was only ten, but his feet were big enough to trip him up constantly. His jeans were baggy, his shirt stained. His hair, the color of Jo’s, was long enough that the boy had to keep jerking his head to one side just to keep from being blinded. He was too quiet for his age, but then, having your world turned upside down on you could do that.

  “Your sister know you’re here?”

  Jack shot him a look and shrugged again. “She’s not home. At a meeting with Sam and Mike at Mike’s house.”

  “So she doesn’t know.” Cash winced as he imagined Jo’s reaction to her little brother’s riding his bike the two miles to Cash’s place. But it was too late now to avoid the storm that would descend when she found out.

  “She won’t care,” Jack said softly, picking up the heavy planer to study it.

  “That’s sharp,” Cash said before the kid could cut himself. “And she will care. Trust me.”

  “Only ’cause you make her mad.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said, remembering their conversation earlier that day. “I do.”

  “Besides, she’s just my sister, she’s not my mom,” Jack muttered, and if possible, his narrow shoulders drooped even farther.

  Cash sighed, and took another sip of his beer before setting it down on the workbench. Looked like he was going to have company for a while. Josefina was going to be royally pissed, but damned if he’d shoo the kid off just to keep his sister from erupting.

  Walking across the room, he took the planer away from Jack and said, “You have to lay this evenly against the edge of the wood. Then you push it slowly forward. It shaves off a little bit of wood at a time.”

  Jack shuffled his feet through the curls of wood on the floor. “Like that?”

  “Yeah. You want to try it?”

  “Really?” Blue eyes lit up with eagerness, and Cash told himself that he’d deal with Jo when he had to. A part of him was already looking forward to watching her fury and that was enough to convince him that he was a sick, sick man.

  “Yeah. Go ahead.” When the boy had hold of the tool, Cash dropped his big hands on top of Jack’s and guided him through the first stroke. “Think you can handle that?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said, chewing determinedly on his bottom lip. “I can do it.”

  “Okay.” Cash turned for the workbench, picked up his favorite planer, and then walked around the project that would eventually become a hand-carved, one-of-a-kind chest of drawers. “You do that side, I’ll do this one. And if you need help, ask.”

  “Right. Okay.” The boy kept his gaze on the task at hand and concentrated on making each stroke of the planer exactly like the first one.

  Cash kept one eye on the kid while he settled into a patient silence. Something had brought the boy all the way out here, and he figured if he waited long enough, the kid would eventually spill it.

  Didn’t mean he cared. Didn’t mean he was letting the boy in. He was just . . . getting a little free labor. He only hoped Jack would talk before Josefina showed up and skewered both of them.

  “So how’s Jack doing?” Mike finished off the last of the muffins, licked her fingers, and turned a look on Jo.

  “Okay, I guess,” Jo said, closing the binder and leaning back on the sofa.

  Truth to tell, she and her new brother weren’t exactly hitting it off real well. Probably her fault, she acknowledged. But then, she hadn’t asked to be a temporary mom, had she?

  Just a week ago, her father had come to see her at her condo.

  Things were still a little strained between her and Papa and they both knew it, though neither one of them mentioned it. Jo hadn’t been able to get past her father—the one man in the world she’d trusted above all others—having an affair while his wife lay dying. And Papa was so busy walking on eggs around her that it only made the situation more uncomfortable.

  “I don’t like to ask, Josefina,” he’d said, rocking nervously on his heels.

  “I know, but—”

  “Michaela, she can’t watch Jack for me right now with the babies so close, and Sam, she’s too sick all the time, plus she has Emma and . . .”

  “I know,” Jo said, trying to find just the right argument and coming up empty. She knew darn well she was going to lose. “But Papa, the business . . .”

  He sensed her weakening and moved in for the big finish. “It’s just a couple of weeks, Josefina. I know I shouldn’t go, but Grace made the reservations and I don’t want to disappoint her.”

  Grace Van Horn, Papa’s lady friend, was worried about him. But then, they all were. He’d had a heart attack several months ago. A minor one, but it was enough to rub mortality in everyone’s faces. Now, Grace had arranged for the two of them to take a roma
ntic cruise around the Greek Islands and Jo, though she really hated to think of her father in a “romantic” situation, couldn’t really tell him no.

  “Fine,” she murmured and let herself enjoy the hard, brief hug from Papa. God, she’d missed him. Missed the easy way they’d always had together.

  And she didn’t know how to get it back.

  “Good. Good. This will be a good thing for you and Jack, too. Give you a chance to know each other. To find your way to—”

  “Papa, don’t,” Jo said, stepping back from his embrace. “I’m fine with Jack. I don’t blame him.”

  “No,” Papa said softly. “You blame me.”

  “Papa—”

  “It’s all right,” he said gruffly, rubbing his eyes viciously. “I said I would give you time.”

  Pain slapped at her and she felt, not for the first time, like an ungrateful child. Like a spoiled-rotten daughter. Why couldn’t she forgive her father for the mistake that still haunted him? Why couldn’t she see past her own pain, her own disappointment, like her sisters had?

  But she knew why, Jo thought, coming out of her memories with a jolt. Because she carried her own secrets. Secrets that she’d never shared with anyone because she’d been too ashamed. Too afraid to tell her father because she hadn’t wanted him to be disappointed in her.

  Ironic.

  “What do you mean, you guess he’s all right?” Sam repeated, staring at her wide-eyed. “You’re living in the same house with him. How’s he doing?”

  Jo shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She sure as hell didn’t want to admit to her sisters that she and their little brother weren’t exactly becoming best friends. Mike and Sam would assume that it was Jo’s fault. That, somehow, she was punishing the boy for being the result of their father’s affair.

  And that so wasn’t true.

  She wasn’t an idiot. She knew none of this was Jack’s fault. But that just didn’t make it any easier to relate to the kid.

  “He never talks,” Jo blurted, as if that would explain everything.

  “You’re kidding,” Sam said.

  “Wow. A quiet Marconi,” Mike muttered, astonished. “Who would have thought?”

  “Not you, that’s for damn sure,” Jo said tightly.

  “So you complain because I talk too much and Jack talks too little,” Mike said, looking around for something else to eat. “Yeah, you’re stable.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Sam demanded, “is it really so surprising? The boy’s mother just died a few months ago, for heaven’s sake. He’s moved in with Papa and now Papa and Grace are gone and he’s forced to live with—”

  “What?” Jo stiffened and sat up straight. She was the first one to admit she wasn’t the easiest person in the world to live with, but she wasn’t exactly the Wicked Witch of the East, either.

  “Oh, look who’s Ms. Sensitive all of a sudden,” Mike said on a laugh.

  “All I’m saying,” Sam said, shutting Mike up with a quick glare, “is that the kid’s a little on edge.”

  “Who isn’t?” Jo muttered. Hell, she had the boy to look after, a business to run, and oh, hey, how about taking final exams so she could finally graduate from college?

  But no one in the family knew about the night classes she’d been taking at UC Chandler for the last three years. In fact, the only person who did know was Cash Hunter, of all people.

  She did a mental head slap and swallowed a groan. She’d spilled her guts to him last year, when she’d discovered she was flunking astronomy. He’d caught her at a bad moment—when she was at the end of her rope and frantic. And he’d kept at her until she’d told him everything. Maybe she’d been able to talk to him because they weren’t close. Anyway, she’d worried about him keeping her secret, but she needn’t have. Not only had Cash given her a book that had actually helped her through the course, he’d also kept his mouth shut about her going back to college.

  She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone until she knew she’d succeeded. And within the next week or so, she’d know.

  “Okay,” Sam said, swallowing hard and covering her mouth with her fingertips. “But he’s ten and you’re . . . almost thirty.”

  “Thanks so much. And if it’s so damn easy . . .” Jo countered, fixing her gaze on Sam, the middle sister. The peacemaker. The innocent bystander who was about to get flattened. “Why don’t you get him to open up to you? You’re the only one of us who actually has a kid.”

  “So far,” Mike put in.

  Jo ignored her, as usual. Keeping her gaze fixed on Sam, she said, “He goes to your house after school three days a week to play with Emma. So why don’t you tell me how he’s doing?”

  Jo folded her arms across her chest, knowing she had her sister there. Sam’s daughter, Emma, was a year or so younger than Jack, but the two of them had formed a bond over the last year. “What’d he have to say today? Tell me, O great one with all the answers.”

  “Today?” Sam said, swallowing again and rubbing her mouth uneasily. “He didn’t come over today.”

  “What do you mean?” A trickle of unease rolled down Jo’s spine. “He was supposed to.”

  “He wasn’t there by the time I left. I figured—” She jumped to her feet, one hand clapped tightly to her mouth. “Oooh . . .” Then she bolted for the bathroom.

  “Swear to God, I’m never getting pregnant,” Jo said, shifting a look at Mike.

  “No problem there,” her youngest sister said. “You actually have to have sex to get pregnant.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Are you sure you’re Italian?”

  Jo scowled at her and reached across the coffee table for the phone. “Never mind about my sex life—”

  “Or lack thereof—” Mike finished for her.

  “—the question now is, where’s Jack?”

  “Relax, Jo,” Mike said, “this is Chandler, not downtown L.A. He probably stopped at a friend’s house before going to Sam’s.”

  “Yeah. Probably.” But as far as Jo knew, their little brother hadn’t made any friends yet. He was quiet and sad and too damn alone all the time. And whether she wanted it or not, she felt fear begin to creep through her bloodstream.

  Punching in Sam’s phone number, she listened to it ring for what seemed like forever before a man answered.

  “Jeff?” Jo said quickly. “Is Jack there yet?”

  Mike watched her from across the table.

  “Okay. Okay,” Jo said, nodding as she listened to her brother-in-law’s calm voice. But despite Jeff’s reassurances, her insides started jumping ferociously. “Just—call Mike or call me at Papa’s house when he shows up, okay?”

  “Not there?” Sam asked as she came back into the room.

  “No.” Jo frowned down at the silent phone and tried to tell herself there was no reason to worry. But how the hell was she supposed to not worry?

  Mike pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Like I said, he’s probably at a friend’s house, you guys.”

  “He doesn’t have any friends,” Jo snapped, and jumped to her feet. Pacing wildly, she muttered, “He plays video games. Or reads. Or watches TV. Or studies.”

  “Jo . . .” Sam reached out for her, but Jo dodged her sister’s hand.

  “No,” she said, “I’ve gotta go. Gotta—” Reaching down, she grabbed up her binder and her dark brown leather purse.

  “Where’re you going?” Sam asked.

  “To look for him.” Jo was already planning her search route. She knew all the fun spots in Chandler. Having grown up here gave her a huge advantage. First and foremost was the beach, of course, and then there was the lake. God. Did Jack know how to swim? Oh God, put that worry away. Pick it up later.

  “You’re worried.”

  She looked at Sam and lied. “Not yet.”

  “He’s fine,” Mike said, dropping both hands to her belly and stroking her own children in protective reflex. “You know he’s fine, right?”

  “Sure.” Jo nodded. “I’ll c
all you la—”

  Her cell phone rang and she reached into her purse to grab it. Flipping the top up, she noted the caller’s number and felt a flash of irritation rush through her. Radar, she thought. The man had radar.

  “What?” she snarled into the phone.

  He talked fast, not giving her a chance to say anything, which was probably just as well. Because at the moment, what she wanted to say would be better said in person.

  While holding something heavy.

  When he stopped talking, she hung up and looked at her sisters.

  “Speak,” Mike demanded. “Who was that?”

  Jo took one deep breath after another until she felt control slip back into her system. She banked her inner fury until it was a nice, contained blaze. When she was sure she could speak without shrieking, she looked at first Sam, then Mike. “Seems like our little brother does have one friend after all.”

  “Yeah?” Sam asked. “Who?”

  Fisting her hand around her cell phone in a grip tight enough to turn charcoal into a diamond, Jo only whispered, “Cash Hunter.”

  Three

  The so-called road to Cash Hunter’s house was so narrow and rocky, it was little more than a trail.

  Jo’s teeth rattled as she stubbornly steered her black truck between the overhanging branches of trees, bushes, and God knew what else. Her hands fisted on the steering wheel, she clenched her jaw and braced for impact as the truck jounced along this stupid track. “Couldn’t the man take care of the damn road? Is he really so busy out seducing women that he can’t take a day off to hack a way through this jungle?”

  Okay, she told herself, maybe she ought to try to calm down a little before meeting up with Cash. Sure. No problem. All it should take is about thirty years and way more patience than she was known for. No matter how she tried to keep the man at a distance, he kept finding a way back in. What was that about?

  “It’s not like I’m falling at his feet or something,” she muttered, and grunted when her right front tire dropped into a pothole the size of Kansas. “Damn it!”

  The toolbox in the back of her truck jostled and clanged from the lockup box directly behind the cab. In fact, the whole damn truck was shaking as if it were at the epicenter of an 8.1 earthquake. Which did nothing to improve her mood.